“This show contains scenes of a sexual nature.”So it says on the Lyric, Hammersmith, website. But you would need to have been living in total isolation not to have realized that, way in advance.I was wondering how many people in the audience might have come along “in search of a little titillation.” Well, that’s how a man, sitting a row in front of me, put it. While giving a leery look to his girlfriend.Rather than hitting him, she winked back.In that case, they’ve probably come to the right place. However, “Tipping the Velvet” is a lot more than that.The story of a Victorian lesbian love affair told in the 1998 novel by Sarah Waters had already garnered plenty of headlines when it was adapted for BBC TV way back in 2002.Those hoping for steamy sex on stage, following the BBC version, may have been a little disappointed. Instead we get aerial acrobatics, a ballet that flies higher as passion grows. It is rather more fun, not to say more tasteful.The adaption is by playwright Laura Wade, best known for “Posh,” the 2010 satire on Bullingdon Club and Sloaney types that transferred from Sloane Square’s Royal Court through to the West End.Wade’s framing is clever. The night that changes everything for one of the two protagonists, Nancy “Nan” Astley, comes when she goes to her local music hall expecting nothing more than an hour or two of diverting entertainment.So we get a music-hall compere who introduces the action with all the razzmatazz of television’s “The Good Old Days.” His incredulous comments steer proceedings. Nan falls for the stage and Kitty Butler, the next act, a male impersonator.At about three hours, it’s a bit too long and worthy in places. Even so, Lyndsey Turner directs well, in a prompt return to glory after the criticism levelled at her role in the Cumberbatch “Hamlet.”Recent RADA graduate Sally Messham does an exceptional job in a professional debut, portraying Nana was she moves from callow oyster girl to starstuck star, prostitute and outspoken politician. It’s good to see issues of feminism, sexuality and equality being handled here, at least as sensitively as the “Suffragette” movie just making the headlines thanks to the London Film Festival.For all that, let’s not get our timelines mixed up: things start in 1887, when single-sex relations were illegal, for men anyway (and everyone knows the story of how Queen Victoria allegedly refused to believe women could have such relationships).The playwright seems to have mixed up her eras though, and while it’s fun I’m not sure the two should be singing Bonnie Tyler or “Kiss” by Prince. This is a musical hall, and it doesn’t need Miley Cyrus or “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”Victorian theater had some sublime love songs about forbidden love that could be revived and reworked. An earlier stage play by Amanda Whittington in 2009 did just that.Roll on the movie, maybe, and certainly, a West End run, following the route of “Posh.”The show is good enough to make it worth traveling out to the Lyric, therefore ideal to be in the center of town too. To October 24 2015 at the Lyric Hammersmith. A coproduction with Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, where it will run from October 28 to November 14. Information: http://www.lyric.co.uk/
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